Michael is the Co-Chief Creative Officer at FCB New York, where together with his partner Gabriel Schmitt, leads the creative department at the agency since January of 2020. During that time (yes, all during COVID,) the agency has experienced 40% growth thanks to new business wins on Spotify, mike’s hard, Axe, Florida Blue, Centrum, and a much-expanded role on the Anheuser-Busch roster of brands. In 2021, FCB NY was the most awarded NA agency The One Show and FCB won Network of the Year at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
In 2019, Michael co-led all global creative output on Microsoft at McCann NY, across all platforms. Prior to that, at BBDO New York, he was responsible for the transformation of the GE brand around the world, melding seamless storytelling and big platform ideas into business-changing solutions for the global giant. Which sounds fancy. But basically, his job was to take a super-complex company and simplify it down to something that even he could understand. Similarly, on Visa, Michael led a 26-interoffice agency group, where he oversaw and collaborated on all Visa creative.
During his 10+ years at BBDO NY, Michael created a singular culture, a micro-agency within the larger BBDO agency model, where his 30+ person group was entrusted to make wildly creative and equally effective work for those aforementioned clients, as well as for KIND Snacks, American Family Insurance and Belvedere vodka. Furthermore, Michael has contributed and led work for Mars brands, AT&T, FedEx and more - most recently co-leading the agency’s global Ford Motors win.
Before that, he worked at BBDO during two different stints between 1995 and today, was ECD at atmosphereBBDO and has freelanced all over NYC. Before that, he was a copywriter at the now-defunct Jordan/McGrath. Before that, he was a dishwasher at Friendly’s.
He's had the good fortune to win every award in the business multiple times: Cannes, One Show, D&AD, AICP, Webbys, Clios, Effies and was even Emmy-nominated for his GE TV spot "Childlike Imagination." Additionally, he's served on the creative jury at The One Show, The Clios, and AICP. He’d like to point out that you can’t vote for your own stuff.
In 2010, he also wrote and directed an independent feature film titled TURNING GREEN starring Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton. The film received theatrical distribution and was featured on Showtime, as well as all streaming outlets. His second feature film, titled MIX26, is currently in pre-production. Michael intends to be survived by his beautiful wife, Jessica, and his two lovely children, Juliet and Will. He thinks he’ll probably outlive his dog, Tallulah.